25 Days of Sense & Sensibility: Day 20 – You Live, I Live, We All Live For Olives

Olives are not known to grow particularly well in England. It is of major agricultural importance and one of the core ingredients in the Mediterranean. The oldest olive tree in Britain is only 100 years old.

I believe Miss Grey’s family made their fortune importing olives to Britain at a time when olives were of great rarity. This is how she has such a large dowry but is still only a Miss and not a Lady or any other title. She is “new money.”

Undeniable proof of this can be found in her name: Olives are green and black, and “grey” is a shade of black.

COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT.

Marianne and Willoughby possibly dined on olives during their picnic at Barton Cottage

As I’ve already proven, olives were rare in Georgian England but not unheard of. I believe Mrs. Jennings’ cook supplied the food for the picnic at Delaford that day and since Sir Middleton is fairly wealthy, it would not be unheard of to have provided something rare to impress their guests with.

SO WHAT IF IT WAS OLIVES?

Furthermore, Willoughby and the Dashwood Family are seen to be eating something back at Barton Cottage and Willoughby pops something into his mouth. IT WAS SMALL AND BITE SIZED AND PROBABLY AN OLIVE.

Mrs. Jennings KNOWS Marianne does not care for olives and made the offer to create gossip

By antagonizing her young guest, Mrs. Jennings would have more embarrassing fodder to share with her friends about the scandalous relationship between her young charge and Willoughby. I think Mrs. Jennings has a secret plan to ruin Marianne’s reparation via olives and her question was a twist of the knife!

I think she purposefully offered to make Marianne cry. We already know she lies when she says “I came right up when I heard the news!”